2011.03.29 23:06

Watching the President’s speech today was an exercise in trying to find clarity of purpose and meaning where there was none. Delivering the speech looked a lot like it was a worried effort to stave off increasing criticizm that a sinking Obama is reaching hard for low-hanging foreign policy fruit to define his administration and thereby reverse his ailing political fortunes.

Throughout the whole speech I was struck by the over-use of the “protection of freedom-loving innocent civilians” and “democratic revolution” rhetoric. Libyan society is many things, but freedom-loving, democratic and innocent are not any of the adjectives I would use in describing it. Perhaps violent, tribal, Islamic, oppressive, dog-eat-dog, geographically cursed, etc. are much closer to the mark. The fact remains there is simply no logical alternative to Ghadafi in Libya. Whipping the public up into an emotional fervor over the way he deals with insurrection (which is a different thing from dealing with peaceful protest) does not do anything to change that reality.

But here we are now, with a French initiative designed to demonstrate to Germany who carries the big stick in the Europe being the adopted political-recovery-through-foreign-policy-intervention tool of Obama. In any case, the political rhetoric doesn’t matter. The reasons (or lack thereof) and justifications for attacking Libya also do not matter. The fact that far worse atrocities are being carried out in systematic ways (as opposed to violence incidental to civil war) by oppressive regimes elsewhere are being paid no attention by the Americans is also a meaningless point to ponder. Those are all good reasons to not trust the future foreign policy of the current American administration, but they do not address the new realities created by the military actions being taken there (on the other hand, France has a much clearer reason for attacking Libya, and like most actual reasons nations go to war it is not the reason they claim it to be in the press — duplicity is part and parcel of statecraft).

Before the intervention in Libya actually occurred and everyone was doing what they really wanted to do — holding press conferences while waiting for Ghadafi to regain comfortable control of his country — the strategic balance of the Mediterranean and future of Libyan sponsored terrorism were not open questions. Now they are. Egypt now has a very clear chance to split Cyrenaica from the western half of Libya whether or not Ghadafi maintains any control, develop energy assets there and use the region as a breeding ground for its own regional militant proxies (which would do many good things for Egypt in the short term, including provide an Arab counter to Iran’s Hezbollah, provide an outlet for disruptive violent elements of its Islamic society that the state has oversight on, etc.). The Sudanese no longer have a counterbalance in the region sponsoring proxy groups that undermine their regional clout (which will be interesting to watch since the south ceceded just recently). Al Qaeda franchise groups no longer have a Ghadafi who is concerned with keeping up appearances after the formal renoucement of terrorism in 2003 to stifle their efforts at reaching into Libya for root support. Italy’s ENI has no idea who the next players in Libyan energy are going to be — which by extension is a troublesome issue for the entire country. Etc.

And of course Ghadafi himself is likely rethinking his comittment to the renouncement of terrorism.

The first concerns about national power and strategic balance are very interesting. The last point is not so much strategically interesting as it is of profound concern for the average European living in blithe comfort. Ghadafi did renounce terrorism, but certainly did not go so far as to cut all ties with the militant proxies that he cultivated over decades of subtle, expensive and concerntrated effort. Certainly he still has significant levers in this realm and, at least to me, doesn’t appear the sort to simply forgive and forget that the Europeans turned their backs on him while he was experiencing a rebellion in his country.

Of course, the above paragraph is about Ghadafi. If he dies tomorrow, there is absolutely no guarantee that the next dictator to rule Libya will see things the same way as the West. Actually, that is simply impossible given public sentiment in Libya. There is no guarantee that the society will settle itself anytime soon, either, whether or not it becomes pro-Western or another Y2K Afganistan. Ghadafi surprised the West by retaining an overwhelming level of support not just in the street but within the military as well. All of that sentiment is not going to simply disappear once he himself is gone. The intricate and inexorable influence of tribalism ensures this. Whatever new power structure arises in Libya after Ghadafi (assuming he does eventually get deposed or disposed of) will be required to conduct a mopping up operation involving the rounding up and execution (or at least impolitic political imprisonment) of former Ghadafi supporters deemed to be continued dangers. I’m sure the Obama administration will not intervene at that time to protect former Ghadafi loyalists, and I doubt Anderson Cooper will head back to the streetz to give us the scoop on how his favorite underdogs are now atrocitying the bejeezus out of their former masters (and anyone else they don’t like just then). I wonder if Lara Logan will have anything to say? (And I actually don’t mean that last sentence as a tacky stab at her for being wrong about Egypt and Egyptians — I’m curious what her view might be now.)

In the press after watching the Obama speech I was struck by the number of people who felt that something of importance had been said. Several comentators made noise to the effect that “now we know what Obama’s foreign policy is” and “the President laid out a clear and convincing case for what he is doing” when nothing of the sort occured. Making balance arguments of negation in speeches is a technique for saying nothing, and that is all Obama did. Statements like “America is not in the business of policing the world, but that is not an argument for never acting” don’t go very far to clarifying the American policy towards anything, particularly when the whole speech focused on the protection of human rights in the context of the Libyan civil war without calling it what it is, and also without mentioning more severe and prolific human rights abuses in Syria or Congo which occurred over the last three days. Libya is a fundamentally unclear situation in which America has no strategic interest whatsoever. It is difficult what any statements about American action there have to do with American global policy, or put another way, what the American intervention in Libya does to clarify the American position anywhere else.

Though America has no interest in Libya, I think Obama believed he had some. He may have viewed this was his chance to pull a Clinton and redefine a failing first term in a positive way through (finally) taking strong a foreign policy action. I said this would be the case a while back, but I had assumed that the issue Obama would pick would be one with more meaning. I also thought that if it would be a meaningless issue he invested himself in, it would at least be one with a higher chance of and clearer criteria for success than what Libya has to offer. Namely, I had predicted that Obama would be more likely to take concrete military action against Iran (which I viewed as the most likely among alternative foreign policy plays) because that would actually mean something and it appears the time may finally be ripening for it. Such an operation would be meaningful both in concrete, political and symbolic terms, and meaningful action goes a lot farther with Americans than flimsy rhetoric expressed as bombing sorties in a country that has little to no impact on American interests. Instead, Obama has picked a side issue of no strategic importance, perhaps in an attempt to play it safe — after all, a bungled operation in Libya would affect the Americans none whatsoever (whereas a bungled operation in Iran would have a far more significant fallout). Unfortunately for him, I doubt that the world will present another chance to shine (or fail) before the next presidential elections are in full swing.

2011.03.24 14:09

American involvement in Libya is problematic, to say the least. Here are some of the things that probably went through the mind of the Secretary of Defense (and probably also of State) when it became clear that Obama was going to direct military involvement regardless what his advisory staff had to say:

1- The situation in Libya is unclear enough that it is difficult to determine whether or not Ghaddafi was really targeting civilians or tribal combatant affiliates. Definitions of irregular tribal and rebel forces are tricky enough in the best of times, and Libya has never had anything approaching “good times” to begin with. The humanitarian crisis and human rights logic is flimsy.

2- There is no indication, much less a guarantee, that the next tyrant to come to power in Libya after Ghaddafi would be any more morally acceptable to the West. In fact we have many indications to the contrary. Most importantly Ghaddafi was already a known quantity — he came to power and maintained support by being a Muslim populist who sponsored terrorist acts against the West. That he found it a useful realpolitik play to temper such behavior over the last few decades tells us a lot about how pragmatic he really is. But on the other hand that maintaining popular support in the days when he had just come into office through a coup and his grip on power was not yet completely secure required a public appeal through Islamic terrorism should tell us a lot about Libyan civil society — and indicates that democracy is about the last thing the Europeans, Americand, Africans, Asians or Moon People should want to see happen in Libya.

3- There are no actual alternatives to Ghaddafi other than fractitcious tribal civil war until one of four things happen:

The end of time

Another competent and ruthless tyrant is found

The country splits back into its former geographic balance with Tripolitania becoming one nation and Cyrenacia becoming another (which would be an Egyptian proxy state and likely a breeding ground for terrorism)

A foreign power decides to colonize the country (again) in a fashion that puts local barbarism to shame

In all cases, what would be gained? Tribal warfare in North Africa is not known for being particularly nice and well mannered. Entire families get wiped out, regardless of age, gender or disposition specifically because the existence of surviving family becomes a critical threat later. This is simply the way things work, but it is also one simple definition of “genocide” — a term that puts human rights activists through the roof.

4- There are no clear objectives to the campaign. We are not seeking regime change, so they say. If this is true, then we are recognizing, if not respecting, Ghaddafi as the legitimate ruler of Libya. If this is the case, why are we dicking around in Libya’s internal affairs? I’m sure that if Virginia were to attack Washington, D.C. next week President Obama would be really pissed if the French and Libyan air forces showed up to stall out the federal counter offensive just shy of capturing Richmond. So if we’re not seeking regime change, what are we after?

5- The eastern part of the country has long been the part where bad guys come from. A large percentage of the unemployed troublemakers in the east turned up in Iraq to fight the Americans. Ghaddafi thought this was just fine, because it meant me and my friends got to take care of them instead of him having to worry about doing it himself (similar logic was behind the Saudis allowing their trouble makers to travel to Afghanistan to get killed by the Soviets in the 1980’s).

6- If we are, in fact, after regime change (which seems to be the real message when Obama says “we aren’t after regime change… Ghaddafi must step down”) the idea that we can cause a regime change with air power alone is totally mistaken. Libya in 2011 is not Yugoslavia in 1999. There are no politically mature alternatives to Ghaddafi waiting in the wings (remember the lawyer and the general talking shit about each other to the BBC about who was really in charge of the eastern council at the outset of this?). If Ghaddafi leaves we will have a tribal war on our hands in any case, which can be viewed as a multi-faceted insurgency stew, or as a multi-way civil war — pick one that fits your definition/worldview best.

7- The longer Libya is mixed up and in turmoil the more chance Egypt’s covert services have a chance to get their fingers in. This would give Egypt a chance to re-start their defunct proxy militia programs on the side of their country which is far from Israel and other prying Western eyes. The initial purpose of such proxy militant groups would probably be to counter Iran’s proxy militant play, but the long term implications of such a move are unpredictable at best and very likely to turn out badly both for Egypt and for the West by the end. The problem is that religion is the best motivator for militant proxy groups in the Middle East and Africa. Religious reasoning, being quasi philosophical in nature (and full of very deliberate, violent death-cult theologic reasoning and justification in the case of Islam), tends to take on a life of its own that is very unpredictable because it is subject to so much whim and interpretation. The fact that Islam is still such a violent motivator even in the absence of political motivation several hundred years after the disappearance of its sponsor and creator (Muhammad) should tell us something. (Organized and state sponsored Christian violence, on the other hand, almost always includes a concrete political motive and seems to require one to motivate people to fight.) This is only partially true when a militant proxy is motivated by pure politics — Socialist and Communist insurgencies largely disappearing after the fall of the Soviet Union is the traditional counter example. In the end, we don’t want eastern Libya to be confused for too long or else it will turn into another Kashmere, South Lebannon, or Eastern Libya a la 1970’s.

8- Let’s pretend that the term “civilian” makes sense in Libya on all counts, that the term “innocent” applies in some sense, that the Libyan people are ready for liberal democracy (as opposed to the rest of the Middle East and Africa which currently all manifest oppressive democracies when, in fact, they are actually democractic at all), and that we have some perfect way of telling combatants and civilians apart. Let’s further pretend that the actual mission in Libya is to protect civlians. The use of overwhelmingly powerful area effect weapons such as aerial munitions and guided missiles is not the way to protect civilians, particularly without the extensive use of close air controllers — which we refuse to deploy because that would be ground troop involvement. Air power is a sledgehammer — a broad, blunt, powerful tool hanging on the kitchen of war. We are trying to stem strawberries here — a delecate operation which doesn’t call for any hammers at all, much less one of that sort. I have great personal experience with the use and effect of air power from the perspective of someone who experiences it on the ground. The argument that we have decided to bomb Libya in order to protect civilians is precisely like saying we’re going to protect civilians in a given city by shelling it with artillery. Because it is impossible to engage in warfare to protect civilians without your own actions contributing to further civilian casualties (outside of an extreme circumstance like the Holocaust) the whole concept of the operation is flawed. Without invading (which would be a different sort of humanitarian disaster anyway) we simply can’t do anything good for civil Libyan society. That requires colonization, but that is a terribly impolitic word in this era, and this particular war is all about popular politics.

9- Even though the idea that America got involved in Iraq “because of oil” is a flimsy myth worthy of debunking on Snopes, the Americans moving on another energy-rich Muslim nation just looks bad. Appearances are all that matters here, and on that level this war is actually about France demonstrating to Germany that it can be the one in the EU to carry the stick if Germany is the one to carry the carrot (or checkbook). The Americans don’t have a horse in this race. The American President also has no defined a foreign policy at all and absolutely refuses to listen to his (much wiser) Secretaries of State and Defense on these issues. He has simply gotten us involved for the sake of saying we’re involved, which is almost always the wrong reason to be doing something.

Available information is always imperfect and it is a leader’s job to be resolute and make decisions in a timely manner. That must be understood and clear. It also must be understood and clear that while campaigning is a highly emotional process, the actual weidling of state power is a fundamentally cold and pragmatic job. But it is important for senior leaders to remember that making snap decisions in an absence of information and defending emotional positions is a very different thing from actually being decisive. The ambiguity of real situations and the inability of anyone to actually foresee all events and outcomes makes decision making difficult. That is why it is so critical that any leader like an American President (or even a bank president, for that matter) have a basic policy outline to follow. Not having one is driving Obama’s presidency into the ground one obvious mistake at a time.

The other day an unusually perfect message title drifted through the “Fedora Women” mailing list. It was good enough that I felt compelled to screenshot it for posterity — and today I remembered to share it with the world:

Whatever the odds of the elements of this subject line coming together to form that particular combination, it was sweet poetic justice. (I mean, we don’t have a “Fedora Men” mailing list… or maybe that is all the other ones? Sort of like not having a “white history month” in school.)

Once again George Friedman has written another outstanding article which once again articulates the realities of a situation more cleanly than I have time to. It is unfortunate that most people are spending most of their time waching emotionally motivated and involved media personalities, bloggers and (sadly in our case) politicians:

Forces from the United States and some European countries have intervened in Libya. Under U.N. authorization, they have imposed a no-fly zone in Libya, meaning they will shoot down any Libyan aircraft that attempts to fly within Libya. In addition, they have conducted attacks against aircraft on the ground, airfields, air defenses and the command, control and communication systems of the Libyan government, and French and U.S. aircraft have struck against Libyan armor and ground forces. There also are reports of European and Egyptian special operations forces deploying in eastern Libya, where the opposition to the government is centered, particularly around the city of Benghazi. In effect, the intervention of this alliance has been against the government of Moammar Gadhafi, and by extension, in favor of his opponents in the east.

The allianceâ€™s full intention is not clear, nor is it clear that the allies are of one mind. The U.N. Security Council resolution clearly authorizes the imposition of a no-fly zone. By extension, this logically authorizes strikes against airfields and related targets. Very broadly, it also defines the mission of the intervention as protecting civilian lives. As such, it does not specifically prohibit the presence of ground forces, though it does clearly state that no â€œforeign occupation forceâ€ shall be permitted on Libyan soil. It can be assumed they intended that forces could intervene in Libya but could not remain in Libya after the intervention. What this means in practice is less than clear.

There is no question that the intervention is designed to protect Gadhafiâ€™s enemies from his forces. Gadhafi had threatened to attack â€œwithout mercyâ€ and had mounted a sustained eastward assault that the rebels proved incapable of slowing. Before the intervention, the vanguard of his forces was on the doorstep of Benghazi. The protection of the eastern rebels from Gadhafiâ€™s vengeance coupled with attacks on facilities under Gadhafiâ€™s control logically leads to the conclusion that the alliance wants regime change, that it wants to replace the Gadhafi government with one led by the rebels.

But that would be too much like the invasion of Iraq against Saddam Hussein, and the United Nations and the alliance havenâ€™t gone that far in their rhetoric, regardless of the logic of their actions. Rather, the goal of the intervention is explicitly to stop Gadhafiâ€™s threat to slaughter his enemies, support his enemies but leave the responsibility for the outcome in the hands of the eastern coalition. In other words â€” and this requires a lot of words to explain â€” they want to intervene to protect Gadhafiâ€™s enemies, they are prepared to support those enemies (though it is not clear how far they are willing to go in providing that support), but they will not be responsible for the outcome of the civil war.

The Regional Context

To understand this logic, it is essential to begin by considering recent events in North Africa and the Arab world and the manner in which Western governments interpreted them. Beginning with Tunisia, spreading to Egypt and then to the Arabian Peninsula, the last two months have seen widespread unrest in the Arab world. Three assumptions have been made about this unrest. The first was that it represented broad-based popular opposition to existing governments, rather than representing the discontent of fragmented minorities â€” in other words, that they were popular revolutions. Second, it assumed that these revolutions had as a common goal the creation of a democratic society. Third, it assumed that the kind of democratic society they wanted was similar to European-American democracy, in other words, a constitutional system supporting Western democratic values.

Each of the countries experiencing unrest was very different. For example, in Egypt, while the cameras focused on demonstrators, they spent little time filming the vast majority of the country that did not rise up. Unlike 1979 in Iran, the shopkeepers and workers did not protest en masse. Whether they supported the demonstrators in Tahrir Square is a matter of conjecture. They might have, but the demonstrators were a tiny fraction of Egyptian society, and while they clearly wanted a democracy, it is less than clear that they wanted a liberal democracy. Recall that the Iranian Revolution created an Islamic Republic more democratic than its critics would like to admit, but radically illiberal and oppressive. In Egypt, it is clear that Mubarak was generally loathed but not clear that the regime in general was being rejected. It is not clear from the outcome what will happen now. Egypt may stay as it is, it may become an illiberal democracy or it may become a liberal democracy.

Consider also Bahrain. Clearly, the majority of the population is Shiite, and resentment toward the Sunni government is apparent. It should be assumed that the protesters want to dramatically increase Shiite power, and elections should do the trick. Whether they want to create a liberal democracy fully aligned with the U.N. doctrines on human rights is somewhat more problematic.

Egypt is a complicated country, and any simple statement about what is going on is going to be wrong. Bahrain is somewhat less complex, but the same holds there. The idea that opposition to the government means support for liberal democracy is a tremendous stretch in all cases â€” and the idea that what the demonstrators say they want on camera is what they actually want is problematic. Even more problematic in many cases is the idea that the demonstrators in the streets simply represent a universal popular will.

Nevertheless, a narrative on what has happened in the Arab world has emerged and has become the framework for thinking about the region. The narrative says that the region is being swept by democratic revolutions (in the Western sense) rising up against oppressive regimes. The West must support these uprisings gently. That means that they must not sponsor them but at the same time act to prevent the repressive regimes from crushing them.

This is a complex maneuver. The West supporting the rebels will turn it into another phase of Western imperialism, under this theory. But the failure to support the rising will be a betrayal of fundamental moral principles. Leaving aside whether the narrative is accurate, reconciling these two principles is not easy â€” but it particularly appeals to Europeans with their ideological preference for â€œsoft power.â€

The West has been walking a tightrope of these contradictory principles; Libya became the place where they fell off. According to the narrative, what happened in Libya was another in a series of democratic uprisings, but in this case suppressed with a brutality outside the bounds of what could be tolerated. Bahrain apparently was inside the bounds, and Egypt was a success, but Libya was a case in which the world could not stand aside while Gadhafi destroyed a democratic uprising. Now, the fact that the world had stood aside for more than 40 years while Gadhafi brutalized his own and other people was not the issue. In the narrative being told, Libya was no longer an isolated tyranny but part of a widespread rising â€” and the one in which the Westâ€™s moral integrity was being tested in the extreme. Now was different from before.

Of course, as with other countries, there was a massive divergence between the narrative and what actually happened. Certainly, that there was unrest in Tunisia and Egypt caused opponents of Gadhafi to think about opportunities, and the apparent ease of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings gave them some degree of confidence. But it would be an enormous mistake to see what has happened in Libya as a mass, liberal democratic uprising. The narrative has to be strained to work in most countries, but in Libya, it breaks down completely.

The Libyan Uprising

As we have pointed out, the Libyan uprising consisted of a cluster of tribes and personalities, some within the Libyan government, some within the army and many others longtime opponents of the regime, all of whom saw an opportunity at this particular moment. Though many in western portions of Libya, notably in the cities of Zawiya and Misurata, identify themselves with the opposition, they do not represent the heart of the historic opposition to Tripoli found in the east. It is this region, known in the pre-independence era as Cyrenaica, that is the core of the opposition movement. United perhaps only by their opposition to Gadhafi, these people hold no common ideology and certainly do not all advocate Western-style democracy. Rather, they saw an opportunity to take greater power, and they tried to seize it.

According to the narrative, Gadhafi should quickly have been overwhelmed â€” but he wasnâ€™t. He actually had substantial support among some tribes and within the army. All of these supporters had a great deal to lose if he was overthrown. Therefore, they proved far stronger collectively than the opposition, even if they were taken aback by the initial opposition successes. To everyoneâ€™s surprise, Gadhafi not only didnâ€™t flee, he counterattacked and repulsed his enemies.

This should not have surprised the world as much as it did. Gadhafi did not run Libya for the past 42 years because he was a fool, nor because he didnâ€™t have support. He was very careful to reward his friends and hurt and weaken his enemies, and his supporters were substantial and motivated. One of the parts of the narrative is that the tyrant is surviving only by force and that the democratic rising readily routs him. The fact is that the tyrant had a lot of support in this case, the opposition wasnâ€™t particularly democratic, much less organized or cohesive, and it was Gadhafi who routed them.

As Gadhafi closed in on Benghazi, the narrative shifted from the triumph of the democratic masses to the need to protect them from Gadhafi â€” hence the urgent calls for airstrikes. But this was tempered by reluctance to act decisively by landing troops, engaging the Libyan army and handing power to the rebels: Imperialism had to be avoided by doing the least possible to protect the rebels while arming them to defeat Gadhafi. Armed and trained by the West, provided with command of the air by the foreign air forces â€” this was the arbitrary line over which the new government keeps from being a Western puppet. It still seems a bit over the line, but thatâ€™s how the story goes.

In fact, the West is now supporting a very diverse and sometimes mutually hostile group of tribes and individuals, bound together by hostility to Gadhafi and not much else. It is possible that over time they could coalesce into a fighting force, but it is far more difficult imagining them defeating Gadhafiâ€™s forces anytime soon, much less governing Libya together. There are simply too many issues between them. It is, in part, these divisions that allowed Gadhafi to stay in power as long as he did. The Westâ€™s ability to impose order on them without governing them, particularly in a short amount of time, is difficult to imagine. They remind me of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, anointed by the Americans, distrusted by much of the country and supported by a fractious coalition.

Other Factors

There are other factors involved, of course. Italy has an interest in Libyan oil, and the United Kingdom was looking for access to the same. But just as Gadhafi was happy to sell the oil, so would any successor regime be; this war was not necessary to guarantee access to oil. NATO politics also played a role. The Germans refused to go with this operation, and that drove the French closer to the Americans and British. There is the Arab League, which supported a no-fly zone (though it did an about-face when it found out that a no-fly zone included bombing things) and offered the opportunity to work with the Arab world.

But it would be a mistake to assume that these passing interests took precedence over the ideological narrative, the genuine belief that it was possible to thread the needle between humanitarianism and imperialism â€” that it was possible to intervene in Libya on humanitarian grounds without thereby interfering in the internal affairs of the country. The belief that one can take recourse to war to save the lives of the innocent without, in the course of that war, taking even more lives of innocents, also was in play.

The comparison to Iraq is obvious. Both countries had a monstrous dictator. Both were subjected to no-fly zones. The no-fly zones donâ€™t deter the dictator. In due course, this evolves into a massive intervention in which the government is overthrown and the opposition goes into an internal civil war while simultaneously attacking the invaders. Of course, alternatively, this might play out like the Kosovo war, where a few months of bombing saw the government surrender the province. But in that case, only a province was in play. In this case, although focused ostensibly on the east, Gadhafi in effect is being asked to give up everything, and the same with his supporters â€” a harder business.

In my view, waging war to pursue the national interest is on rare occasion necessary. Waging war for ideological reasons requires a clear understanding of the ideology and an even clearer understanding of the reality on the ground. In this intervention, the ideology is not crystal clear, torn as it is between the concept of self-determination and the obligation to intervene to protect the favored faction. The reality on the ground is even less clear. The reality of democratic uprisings in the Arab world is much more complicated than the narrative makes it out to be, and the application of the narrative to Libya simply breaks down. There is unrest, but unrest comes in many sizes, democratic being only one.

Whenever you intervene in a country, whatever your intentions, you are intervening on someoneâ€™s side. In this case, the United States, France and Britain are intervening in favor of a poorly defined group of mutually hostile and suspicious tribes and factions that have failed to coalesce, at least so far, into a meaningful military force. The intervention may well succeed. The question is whether the outcome will create a morally superior nation. It is said that there canâ€™t be anything worse than Gadhafi. But Gadhafi did not rule for 42 years because he was simply a dictator using force against innocents, but rather because he speaks to a real and powerful dimension of Libya.

2011.03.20 03:16

I’ve been watching Libya pretty closely, wondering when the world will get a clue and understand that the geopolitical play is actually still between America & Saudi VS Iran. The Libiya situation is awesome high drama for the world right now (despite being of little import) yet the interplay between a Persian rise across the Middle East and how the world recovers from the current economic slowdown in the face of a major emotional (and nothing more) crisis over energy (think long and hard about the implications of people being more scared of nuclear power than they were before the recent tsunami in Japan) is definitely more interesting and more important.

But modern man is far more concerned with inconsequential drama (e.g. “human rights” — a concept which serves socialists well until it comes time for them to violate the principle themselves — of course, only in the interest of the “greater good” you see) than the concrete resolution to very real problems which are difficult to deal with (and therefore emotionally easy to defer until later — a habit known to schoolchildren as “procrastination” and to politicians as “dynamic focus”).

Anyway, Ghaddafi has proven once again why he is the ruler of a difficult country called Libya and our senior Student Council President, Barak Obama, is not. Ghaddafi is in charge of a collection of cutthroat tribes who would (and do) sell out their own mothers to gain an upper hand, even at the expense of splitting their own country in half or subjecting their people to endless iterations of civil war. That is, in fact, what has happened in several cases recently. Libya is not so much a country as a collection of tribes who are constantly at odds. Humans are nothing more than mammals, and the faggotry that is the anti-religion movement supports me on that. On the other hand the same fags that hate the idea of religion (because God says “penor in male buttocks is bad” — yet oddly has very little to nothing to say about fish festivals — unfair, but whatev) also hate the idea of “human rights” abuse (the Christians are, oddly, usually OK with it, accepting the idea that life sucks and is unfair in most cases) and so don’t agree with Ghaddafi at all.

The problem here is that the basic assumption is that humans are generally good and peaceloving and very fair. That is simply not true. Humans are mammals and as such very aggressive, mean, selfish, cliquish and smart. All at once. What that means is that humans are the sort that not only would survive the extinction event that destroyed the dinosaurs, but also give rise to the next apex predator (specifically, me). You don’t get to the top by being nice (and I am certainly not, unless you are on my side).

Now consider a tribal society living very close to the survival line (as opposed to a lax society composed of newfags who are so far removed from the survival line that they think art is important “for art’s sake”, emotions matter at all, and that women are not somehow fundamentally more important for biological progression than men because they haven’t experienced a generation in which famine, disease or total war has limited the things one can do in a day or life in concrete and definitely “unfair” ways). In such a society only the alpha dog will rise to the top. Such an alpha will be considered a complete thug by outsiders who live in, say, France (or almost anywhere in Europe). That is normal. What is not normal, however, is that the Europeans should think they need to somehow regulate what another nation’s alpha thug is up to — aside from ensuring that he no longer sanctions the downing of civilian flights in Scotland.

The Europeans, Americans and Asians — everybody, in fact — recognize that it is in their best interest to just let Ghaddafi have Libya and resume the status quo as soon as possible. What they screwed up on was shifting their position when they got Egyptian public noise confused with actual power moves and further got Libyan tribal noise mixed up with Egyptian agitation. Libya is not Egypt, and there is nobody in Libya to control the tribes (who are in serious need of controlling) than Ghaddafi. Westerners should be careful about their calls for “democracy” because they might actually get what they are asking for. If, for example, a democracy were to be installed in Saudi Arabia the West would instantly see a huge surge of funding for anti-West Islamic jihadi groups from London to New York to Tokyo (funny thing about jihad is that Tokyo not being Christian doesn’t exonerate them from the Islamic mandate to be subjugated — a point worth remembering).

Who would that benefit? Nobody, that’s who. The Europeans would either continue to be fags and rot in their own American protected and subsidized socialist filth while America atrocitied the shit out of the entire Middle East in an attempt to protect the Europeans and their values of non-aggression (ah, the irony of that is so sweet — as would be the European outcry against “American barbarism”), or the European pendulum would finally swing the other way in typically radical fashion and the Europeans would again start building gas chambers to deal with the “brown people question”. Is this ridiculous? No. Not at all. It has happened before. Actually, it has happened several times, but nobody wants to talk about that and Europe in the same breath… because we all think the EU is going to change all that (and we are wrong).

So anyway, back to the focus of what I usually write blog articles about: what will happen next. Ghaddafi will win. Period. The Europeans will continue to have talks about having talks. They will talk a lot about imposing a “no-fly zone” when, in fact, flying isn’t in the least the issue at hand here. Ghaddafi will go ahead and try the folks for treason who actually committed such (as would happen in, say, France, the UK or the USA were someone to attempt to violently suceed or militarily assault the national capitol) and allow the other members of various tribes to come back into the fold (specifically, this means accepting pledges of fealty from tribal leaders who had previously announced a split with Ghaddafi or had been ambivalent in their stance during the uncertain periods of the last two weeks).

What is yet to be seen is whether Libya will resume energy ties to former partners. A lot of state owned energy companies stand to lose a lot in the ensuing mix. But whatev. The countries who decided to intervene in another country’s internal matters now have to face the consequences of having planted their flag on the losing side — as sometimes happens in geopolitics.

Everything Ghaddafi has done has demonstrated how savvy he is — and therefore deserving of his position at the head of the geographic and cultural disaster that is Libya. Everything the West has done “in response” has not only demonstrated how inept they are at identifying anchored points of real power (perhaps a failing of democracy where a leader is elected based on how good he is at running political campaigns, not actually wielding the resultant power), but also how little they respect the sovereignty of smaller nations (would Germany be seen as benevolent in its next invasion of France were the Southern French to once again revolt against Paris?).

Anyway, watching everyone backtrack from their strong statements is going to be pretty funny. We’ve seen Obama, running an administration which has increasingly demonstrated that it has not given a thought to developing a coherent foreign policy (which prevents one from making pre-emptive decisions and instead just reacting with everyone else, and hence developing a geopolitical Johnny-Come-Lately syndrome which is not at all unlike the same syndrome manifested in, say, the stock market where the last person to pick up the “last big thing” is the biggest loser) make gradually escalating statements against Ghaddafi when it should have been ramping its rhetoric down the more aparent it became that Ghaddafi never really lost control. We’ve seen the Europeans do the same thing. What this does domestically is push the leaders of such countries into a corner where they have to at least be seen as acting decisively about issues they have claimed are important to them (and their nations, though that is highly debatable).

Wee. Meaningless drama. All the while the fate of the Hormuz Strait is completely left unreported on — and therefore unconsidered by everyone driving a 2-ton vehicle 40+ miles to work everyday, all the while bitching about how the goddam price of gas keeps going up. Its OK. Its all the Japanese tsunami’s fault. And as we learned from Katrina, that is all George Bush’s fault somehow. Ignorance is bliss.

2011.03.7 18:45

It is a well known fact that the rest of the world’s leaders wait on a solid foreign policy direction to come out of any new American President before deciding how to chart their own course. When you’re the captain of a fishing boat it is important to know where the giant aircraft carrier in the harbor is planning on moving next so you don’t get in the way, waste your energy fighting its wake, or identify whether an opportunity to surf its wake and save yourself some trouble is in the offing.

Despite my continued assertion that idiots cannot survive long as world leaders (sometimes this is different than being a president — observe that Egypt’s true power structure has had little to do with who is actually sitting in office), that nations by and large get the governments that they deserve, and that people often unconsciously pursue personal goals which inadvertently end up promoting the interest of the society in which they live the Obama Administration still shows absolutely zero signs of declaring any clear foreign policy direction after being in office for over two years. The closest thing to a foreign policy that President Obama has settled on is shifting the focus of American war efforts from Iraq to Afghanistan. In all other areas he is simply following the Bush-era playbook yet executing the plays somewhat more poorly and with far less style. The only changes here from Bush’s plan is that Bush had already begun a withdrawal from Iraq and planned to keep a small contingent there to block Iran (Obama seems to have made no decision on how to deal with Iran, apparently shocked that our trouble with Iran is practical and not merely rhetorical in nature), withdraw from Afganistan sooner than later and refocus on the emerging challenges posed by Russia’s rise, the fragmentation and likely eventual demise of the EU, shifts in Asian power and so-on. Obama has prolonged and intensified the war, not shortened it. So much for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In general it is a good thing to continue existing foreign policy — like the aircraft carrier I compared America to in the first paragraph it takes a long time to turn an organization as large as America (or, conversely, the world) around — but after a few years in office the rest of the world tends to start wondering what is on the American President’s mind if they still don’t know. The Obama administration’s rapid policy shifts have come to look a lot less like political agility and a lot more like ultimate indecision.

With that in mind, and with a reminder to how the Obama administration decided to toss plans at coherent policy advice coming from the Department of State (headed by a much older and apparently wiser — “evil” though she may be — Hillary Clinton) regarding the civil unrest in Egypt, I’d like to bring your attention to current goings on in Libya.

Libya is more or less an artificial country. It is not a nation in the sense that it is one people who share common cultural cues and inhabit a more or less contiguous geography with internal lines of drift and external barriers to invasion. Instead it is a cobbled together mass of tribes which are at constant low-level war with one another. Only a supremely devious, strong and cunning (in a word, “competent”) leader has any chance at keeping such an artificial country together, and that leader has until now been Ghaddafi. Ghaddafi has been a fun character for political writers and politicians for years, serving both as a convenient boogey-man when a need to talk shit about iron fisted dictators arises and, critically, as an actual iron fisted dictator who is capable of keeping Libya calm and quiet, generally void of international jihadist groups (that is, since Ghaddafi mended his ways after the Lockerbie Bombing) and a reasonably sound energy trading partner for Southern Europe (particularly Italy).

But now everything is all haywire. The rhetoric of anti-dictator shit-talking is so engrained both in the press and in the mouths of politicians that the critical value of Ghaddafi as the one man who could keep a lid on all the angry festering chaos that is Libya is necessarily overlooked in the interest of being politically correct. As I noted before, the press is even now still calling rebels “protesters” in the interest of demonizing Ghaddafi’s armed challenge to them, though this is beginning to slowly (finally!) change. That there is no real alternative to Ghaddafi is not a very popular thing to talk about just yet, nor are the consequences of emboldening anti-government movements all across the most screwed up parts of the world.

But national-level politicians, security professionals, geopolitical thinkers and deeply srs Gentlemen! all appreciate the irony of demonizing Ghaddafi publicly while he is teetering on the brink of losing power while desperately praying that he can get a handle on things. Everyone in power today hopes to see him crush the rebels and provide an overwhelmingly brutal example of why the smellier parts of the world should just simmer down and accept the status quo once more. We are as afraid of giving jihadist populations true democracy as we are blindly intent on actually promoting the spread of democracy. It is anathema to declare that anyone is not ready for democracy, despite that being the case.

America is far more than capable of simply arming some rebels. America is the largest weapons exporter in the world and Americans make the absolute best stuff when it comes to this. The Americans certainly don’t need the Saudis to do this for them if the true goal is actually the arming of Libya’s rebels.

Imposing a no-fly zone requires military might. This is the practical edge of politics, it is not something that can simply be asked for (hence the word “impose” in the previous sentence). This would, naturally, require the deployment of American military assets which would be, by definition, the utilization of the military to intervene in another country.

Two more things should jump out at the reader after a bit of reflection:

Saudi Arabia is intent on seeing the unrest across the Middle East put down, not promoted. The rebels in eastern Libya do not see things the same way as the Saudis, and are far more likely to be ideological enemies of the House of al Saud than allies with it in any case. Saudi has already made statements to the effect that Ghaddafi can and should do what needs to be done to quell the unrest, and the intended audience of such statements are the domestic Shia and disgruntled segment of their own Sunni population. They don’t want to see the unrest expand and are supportive of strong measures to ensure things get back under control. Supporting rebels is the last thing on their agenda — or at least was as of two days ago (but things can change). Unless there has been some special understanding reached between the U.S. and the Saudis about this issue that is not public knowledge (and counter to recent trends) the U.S. is either deliberately putting the Saudis in a difficult domestic situation by asking for this sort of assistance only to force them to publicly say “no” and break with the U.S. on a foreign policy initiative or is simply delaying the conversation about what to do in Libya so that the Obama administration can put off making a solid decision about it for another day by asking a country to assist rebels who they know will say “no” to.

Discussing the imposition of a no fly zone delays the imposition of one. This is perhaps America’s way of delaying any decisions here as well — to stir debate and argument about what actually qualifies as military intervention (a dirty word in politics these days) to delay the actual implementation of such a solution. This is similar to the way Iran uses talks about having talks about its nuclear program to perpetually delay the any actual discussions of the nuclear program.

A lot of noise is being had all around the world, but make no mistake: nobody will or wants to make any concrete moves against Ghaddafi until a viable alternative to him is found. Everybody’s favorite option is to delay action by deferring all decisions to “comittee” or “coalition consensus” or whatever indefinitely in the hope that in the meantime Ghaddafi actually regains his iron grip on Libya thereby preventing the need for any acrual action to occur. Everyone wants to then talk smack about him and how bad he is, chastise him for putting down a rebellion (the implication being that the governments doing the chastising are morally superior*), and go get busy fixing the natural gas and oil infrastructure in the country.

It will be interesting to see how things go. It is clear that the Obama administration is not much closer to making a decision on any of this than they are on how to deal with Russia’s resurgence, Iran’s intransigence, India-Pakistan relations, or the increasing potential for an internal failure in the Chinese system. The news stories above do the typical news thing and go to greath length explaining and recounting arguments (wind) between concerned parties that have little to do with whatever is actually going on in the country of prime question, in this case Libya. All this discussion whether or not Saudi will help arm rebels in Libya (almost defnitely no) or whether or not intervening with the military is military intervention (almost definitely yes) meanwhile everyone is hoping Ghaddafi takes full advantage of the delays and gets a grip on things.

[*All this despite the fact that I’m sure Berlin or Paris would be more than happy to attack Bayern or Normandy if they were to attempt to seceed or engage in an armed contest with their governments, whether or not “protesters” were involved.]

2011.03.3 01:25

The media is still high on emotion during what they continue to misinterpret as pro-democracy protests across the Middle East (and in some sense other places as well, such as China). As a careful observer would note, Egypt did not undergo any regime change, instead the military used the protests to promote the idea that a credible change occured when in fact a military control progression is what took place. In Libya the media still refers to “protesters” being in the streets and taking over this or that town or facility when in fact the proper term is “rebels”. A military coup with the goal of forcing a succession of command is not the same thing as a democratic revolution and a fractious tribal rebellion which threatens to disintegrate a state through civil war is a different thing than a pro-democracy protest movement (that is like calling the American Confederacy of the 1860’s a “democracy protest movement”).

But I digress… I want to talk about Bahrain, Saudi and Iran for a moment. Iran is trying to interfere in Bahrain as much as possible to push its influence into the country and the region. Bahrain is a highly strategic country as it is the headquarters for the U.S. 5th Fleet as well as being a close neighbor with strong cultural ties to Saudi Arabia. It is also a country with strong cultural ties to Iran. The population of Bahrain is 70% Shia (strong ties to Iran) but is controlled by a Sunni royal family and political structure (strong ties to Saudi). It does not appear that the Iranian plan to foment widespread unrest in Bahrain is working out as planned, as the Bahraini regime is doing a good job of responding to protesters’ demands and flexing around the situation (the protests in Bahrain are, in fact, protests and are more about socio-economic issues than pushing for democracy).

Saudi is worried that if protests get out of hand in Bahrain it could embolden dissident elements within Saudi Arabia at a critical time in Saudi history where the regime is facing a critical level of power transition within a few years and their old Shia enemeies in the region are riding the upswing of the power imbalance caused by the fallout of the Iraq War. The Saudi king is old, unhealthy and inevitably on his natural way out and all three top princes are also extremely old and wouldn’t last long on the throne. The Iraq situation has seen a shift from a Baathist regime under Saddam which, at worst, was neutral to Saudi and definitely hostile to Iran replaced with a Shia regime which threatens to be puppeted about by traditional rival Iran. The Saudi military has the best equipment that money can buy (and lots of it) but some of the shittiest leadership in the region, and absolutely no match for the Iranians if an armed conflict were to evolve (one somewhat comical Wikileak moment was the release of a cable in which U.S. Secretary of Defense Gates was reported to characterize the Saudis as “always willing to fight to the last American”).

Obviously the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia are opposed to a dramatic shift of the regional balance of power in Iran’s favor, and Iran is playing on those fears by dressing up their nuclear threat and using it as their primary ace in the geopolitics hole. The future status of Iraq is obviously pivotal to the future of regional balance as well, but as the balance rests primarily between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Iran is looking to take a shot at capitalizing on current regional unrest to undercut and, if possible, eleminate whatever credible threat a strong and pro-U.S. Saudi Arabia represents. If protests can’t unseat the House of al Saud and throw Saudi Arabia into an inwardly focused tailspin, it can at least distract the Saudis if it can foment some level of domsestic unrest and possibly internationally discredit the Saudi government if the protesters can provoke the regime to use violence to put down a protest movement.

This sounds like a good plan. Keep the unrest going, raise the Shia power profile in the region and undercut the Saudi and Bahraini governments — which would go a long way to clearing the way for a regional rise of Iranian prominence and complicate the American situation in the Middle East immensely.

But there is one major strategic detail a strong execution of this plan would overlook: the price of oil. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter, and as such any disturbing vibrations within or even near the place induces crazy swings in the global price of oil. With the global economy in the middle of a tenuous recovery* another unexpected swing in the price of oil could be enough to derail whatever gains have been had across 2010. That’s playing with fire — a lot of fire. That is actually what has protected Iran from any AmericanÂ or Israeli military moves over the last few years.

The Iranians like to talk long and loud about how they aren’t going to talk about their nuclear program while lording it over negotiation efforts, but their true best option to threaten the West (and, incidentally, East) is to threaten to mine or otherwise close the Strait of Hormuz. About 80% of the regions oil traverses the tiny little strait and Iran sits on the north half of it. A swarm of mine-laying boats would be nearly impossible for even the U.S. Navy to prevent from laying at least a few mines. Even if all Iranian boats were interdicted before dropping their mine payload there would be no way to guarantee there were no mines in the water threatening oil tankers and other shipping than to engage in a lengthy and difficult demining operation. This would surely push the price of oil through the roof, collapse the global economic recovery and likely generate another global economic downturn. The U.S. currently calculates that the risk of attacking Iran (which it is important to note is a very different thing from invading Iran) outweighs the benefits of knocking them down a few pegs, as Global Economy > Irritating Shiite Country.

But this is where Iran’s current strategy of undermining Saudi with civil unrest comes in. If the Iranians were to succeed in fomenting widespread unrest in Saudi Arabia on the same level as, say, Egypt or even Bahrain, the price of oil would skyrocket. While instability in Saudi Arabia would definitely remove obstacles to Iran’s regional rise, it would also remove whatever restraint the Americans have shown in not attacking Iran. The American thinking would be along the lines of:

If Iran threatens to rise to regional dominance then they must be stopped. However, an unbearably high temporary price of oil throwing the world back into global recession is an unacceptable price to pay for preventing their rise. If the price of oil is going to skyrocket anyway due to unrest in Saudi Arabia, however, there is no merit in not attacking Iran to set their plans back a decade and no reason to refrain from engaging in deliberate efforts to dismantle their nuclear program and sponsoring our own insurgency sponsorship program within that country.

Difficult choices all around. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. In any case, this is one of the very few scenarios where I see the U.S. attacking the Iranians without first finding a way to solve the tricky issue of securing the Strait of Hormuz in an absolute way prior to an attack. Needless to say, the current Iranian plan of encouraging civil unrest in Saudi Arabia is an excellent example of how operational blowback and unintended consequences can rule futures and strategic decisions.

[*Specifically, with the U.S. undergoing a normal recovery, Europe trying hard to not expose itself to even more of its recently uncovered deeply entrenched economic instability, Russia playing at political energy levers in Europe, Italy potentially losing its energy resources in Libya, and China being an economic bubble inflating to the point it will burst in ways the current world generation no longer remembers]

2011.03.1 13:53

I have dodged making statements about the Middle Eastern civil turmoil lately, mainly because the situation in each country is radically different and there is no unifying theme to the current waves of unrest other than BBC and CNN seem to think it is their duty to foment unrest. The existing tensions in each country are completely different and independent of one another, and none of the situations describes anything close to actual civil revolution, despite what the TV tells you. Stratfor‘s George Friedman published an insightful (as usual) piece that I am reposting below. It is firmly grounded in reality and articulates the situation in Egypt and what the events there meant better than I have time to at present.

On Feb. 11, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned. A military council was named to govern in his place. On Feb. 11-12, the crowds that had gathered in Tahrir Square celebrated Mubarak’s fall and the triumph of democracy in Egypt. On Feb. 13, the military council abolished the constitution and dissolved parliament, promising a new constitution to be ratified by a referendum and stating that the military would rule for six months, or until the military decides it’s ready to hold parliamentary and presidential elections.

What we see is that while Mubarak is gone, the military regime in which he served has dramatically increased its power. This isn’t incompatible with democratic reform. Organizing elections, political parties and candidates is not something that can be done quickly. If the military is sincere in its intentions, it will have to do these things. The problem is that if the military is insincere it will do exactly the same things. Six months is a long time, passions can subside and promises can be forgotten.

At this point, we simply don’t know what will happen. We do know what has happened. Mubarak is out of office, the military regime remains intact and it is stronger than ever. This is not surprising, given what STRATFOR has said about recent events in Egypt, but the reality of what has happened in the last 72 hours and the interpretation that much of the world has placed on it are startlingly different. Power rests with the regime, not with the crowds. In our view, the crowds never had nearly as much power as many have claimed.

Certainly, there was a large crowd concentrated in a square in Cairo, and there were demonstrations in other cities. But the crowd was limited. It never got to be more than 300,000 people or so in Tahrir Square, and while that’s a lot of people, it is nothing like the crowds that turned out during the 1989 risings in Eastern Europe or the 1979 revolution in Iran. Those were massive social convulsions in which millions came out onto the streets. The crowd in Cairo never swelled to the point that it involved a substantial portion of the city.

In a genuine revolution, the police and military cannot contain the crowds. In Egypt, the military chose not to confront the demonstrators, not because the military itself was split, but because it agreed with the demonstrators’ core demand: getting rid of Mubarak. And since the military was the essence of the Egyptian regime, it is odd to consider this a revolution.

Mubarak and the Regime

The crowd in Cairo, as telegenic as it was, was the backdrop to the drama, not the main feature. The main drama began months ago when it became apparent that Mubarak intended to make his reform-minded 47-year-old son, Gamal, lacking in military service, president of Egypt. This represented a direct challenge to the regime. In a way, Mubarak was the one trying to overthrow the regime.

The Egyptian regime was founded in a coup led by Col. Gamal Abdul Nasser and modeled after that of Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, basing it on the military. It was intended to be a secular regime with democratic elements, but it would be guaranteed and ultimately controlled by the military. Nasser believed that the military was the most modern and progressive element of Egyptian society and that it had to be given the responsibility and power to modernize Egypt.

While Nasser took off his uniform, the military remained the bulwark of the regime. Each successive president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, while formally elected in elections of varying dubiousness, was an officer in the Egyptian military who had removed his uniform when he entered political life.

Mubarak’s decision to name his son represented a direct challenge to the Egyptian regime. Gamal Mubarak was not a career military officer, nor was he linked to the military’s high command, which had been the real power in the regime. Mubarak’s desire to have his son succeed him appalled and enraged the Egyptian military, the defender of the regime. If he were to be appointed, then the military regime would be replaced by, in essence, a hereditary monarchy — what had ruled Egypt before the military. Large segments of the military had been maneuvering to block Mubarak’s ambitions and, with increasing intensity, wanted to see Mubarak step down in order to pave the way for an orderly succession using the elections scheduled for September, elections designed to affirm the regime by selecting a figure acceptable to the senior military men. Mubarak’s insistence on Gamal and his unwillingness to step down created a crisis for the regime. The military feared the regime could not survive Mubarak’s ambitions.

This is the key point to understand. There is a critical distinction between the regime and Hosni Mubarak. The regime consisted — and consists — of complex institutions centered on the military but also including the civilian bureaucracy controlled by the military. Hosni Mubarak was the leader of the regime, successor to Nasser and Sadat, who over time came to distinguish his interests from those of the regime. He was increasingly seen as a threat to the regime, and the regime turned on him.

The demonstrators never called for the downfall of the regime. They demanded that Mubarak step aside. This was the same demand that was being made by many if not most officers in the military months before the crowds gathered in the streets. The military did not like the spectacle of the crowds, which is not the way the military likes to handle political matters. At the same time, paradoxically, the military welcomed the demonstrations, since they created a crisis that put the question of Mubarak’s future on the table. They gave the military an opportunity to save the regime and preserve its own interests.

The Egyptian military is opaque. It isn’t clear who was reluctant to act and who was eager. We would guess that the people who now make up the ruling military council were reluctant to act. They were of the same generation as Hosni Mubarak, owed their careers to him and were his friends. Younger officers, who had joined the military after 1973 and had trained with the Americans rather than the Soviets, were the likely agitators for blocking Mubarak’s selection of Gamal as his heir, but there were also senior officers publicly expressing reservations. Who was on what side is a guess. What is known is that many in the military opposed Gamal, would not push the issue to a coup, and then staged a coup designed to save the regime after the demonstrations in Cairo were under way.

That is the point. What happened was not a revolution. The demonstrators never brought down Mubarak, let alone the regime. What happened was a military coup that used the cover of protests to force Mubarak out of office in order to preserve the regime. When it became clear Feb. 10 that Mubarak would not voluntarily step down, the military staged what amounted to a coup to force his resignation. Once he was forced out of office, the military took over the existing regime by creating a military council and taking control of critical ministries. The regime was always centered on the military. What happened on Feb. 11 was that the military took direct control.

Again, as a guess, the older officers, friends of Mubarak, found themselves under pressure from other officers and the United States to act. They finally did, taking the major positions for themselves. The demonstrations were the backdrop for this drama and the justification for the military’s actions, but they were not a revolution in the streets. It was a military coup designed to preserve a military-dominated regime. And that was what the crowds were demanding as well.

Coup and Revolution

We now face the question of whether the coup will turn into a revolution. The demonstrators demanded — and the military has agreed to hold — genuinely democratic elections and to stop repression. It is not clear that the new leaders mean what they have said or were simply saying it to get the crowds to go home. But there are deeper problems in the democratization of Egypt. First, Mubarak’s repression had wrecked civil society. The formation of coherent political parties able to find and run candidates will take a while. Second, the military is deeply enmeshed in running the country. Backing them out of that position, with the best will in the world, will require time. The military bought time Feb. 13, but it is not clear that six months is enough time, and it is not clear that, in the end, the military will want to leave the position it has held for more than half a century.

Of course, there is the feeling, as there was in 2009 with the Tehran demonstrations, that something unheard of has taken place, as U.S. President Barack Obama has implied. It is said to have something to do with Twitter and Facebook. We should recall that, in our time, genuine revolutions that destroyed regimes took place in 1989 and 1979, the latter even before there were PCs. Indeed, such revolutions go back to the 18th century. None of them required smartphones, and all of them were more thorough and profound than what has happened in Egypt so far. This revolution will not be “Twitterized.” The largest number of protesters arrived in Tahrir Square after the Internet was completely shut down.

The new government has promised to honor all foreign commitments, which obviously include the most controversial one in Egypt, the treaty with Israel. During the celebrations the evening of Feb. 11 and morning of Feb. 12, the two chants were about democracy and Palestine. While the regime committed itself to maintaining the treaty with Israel, the crowds in the square seemed to have other thoughts, not yet clearly defined. But then, it is not clear that the demonstrators in the square represent the wishes of 80 million Egyptians. For all the chatter about the Egyptian people demanding democracy, the fact is that hardly anyone participated in the demonstrations, relative to the number of Egyptians there are, and no one really knows how the Egyptian people would vote on this issue.

The Egyptian government is hardly in a position to confront Israel, even if it wanted to. The Egyptian army has mostly American equipment and cannot function if the Americans don’t provide spare parts or contractors to maintain that equipment. There is no Soviet Union vying to replace the United States today. Re-equipping and training a military the size of Egypt’s is measured in decades, not weeks. Egypt is not going to war any time soon. But then the new rulers have declared that all prior treaties — such as with Israel — will remain in effect.

What Was Achieved?

Therefore, we face this reality. The Egyptian regime is still there, still controlled by old generals. They are committed to the same foreign policy as the man they forced out of office. They have promised democracy, but it is not clear that they mean it. If they mean it, it is not clear how they would do it, certainly not in a timeframe of a few months. Indeed, this means that the crowds may re-emerge demanding more rapid democratization, depending on who organized the crowds in the first place and what their intentions are now.

It is not that nothing happened in Egypt, and it is not that it isn’t important. It is simply that what happened was not what the media portrayed but a much more complex process, most of it not viewable on TV. Certainly, there was nothing unprecedented in what was achieved or how it was achieved. It is not even clear what was achieved. Nor is it clear that anything that has happened changes Egyptian foreign or domestic policy. It is not even clear that those policies could be changed in practical terms regardless of intent.

The week began with an old soldier running Egypt. It ended with different old soldiers running Egypt with even more formal power than Mubarak had. This has caused worldwide shock and awe. We were killjoys in 2009, when we said the Iranians revolution wasn’t going anywhere. We do not want to be killjoys now, since everyone is so excited and happy. But we should point out that, in spite of the crowds, nothing much has really happened yet in Egypt. It doesn’t mean that it won’t, but it hasn’t yet.

An 82-year-old man has been thrown out of office, and his son will not be president. The constitution and parliament are gone and a military junta is in charge. The rest is speculation.